Glee Season 1 Episode 11: Hairography

We are still in the throes of turkey and carb overload-induced coma while simultaneously attempting to gear ourselves up for what we hope is a mere toe-dip into Black Friday madness, and since Pinthis was a pretty disjointed episode that recycled a lot of the same old conflicts, we’re only up for bullet points and videos. We figure that’s all you’re up for too. Ready? Go.

– Except there are no videos. Boo to Fox, who apparently is protecting its property vigorously. It gets harder and harder to find decent embeddable performance clips from each episode, and this week we couldn’t find any at all, unfortunately.

– It says something about the quality of the episode that we’re not particularly upset about Bullet Point # 1. There just weren’t any kickass musical numbers. Sure, “Papa Don’t Preach” was cute (and Quinn’s best vocal performance yet) and so was “True Colors,” if only for the long-overdue Tina solo. Her voice was perfectly suited for the song. That Hair + Beyonce Pinmashup was funny – especially the deaf kids’ reaction to it – but it’s not like we were humming it the next day, which was kind of the point, we guess.

– But what really kind of made us uncomfortable was the “Imagine” number. They were clearly going for the lump-in-the-throat effect (and to be fair, they got it from us, a little bit), but we couldn’t help thinking how rude it was for the New Directions kids to jump in uninvited. And it struck us as a little bit of a copout on the creators’ part. If you wanted us to tear up over the deaf choir, then have the bravery to give them the spotlight on their own.

– “It’s like cool epilepsy.” lines like this, along with characters like the pick-pocketing Aphasia, are what keep the show from skirting too far into Hallmark Channel sweetness. The occasional political Pinincorrectness of the show is, for us, a selling point and to its credit, it’s applied equally to all the characters, from the pregnant head of the chastity club to the scheming bitchy queen, plotting to trick his unrequited love into loving him.

– Having said that, there’s no denying that the show definitely has a problem with its female characters. Terri, her sister Kendra, Quinn, Sue Sylvester, Rachel – they’re all either batshit crazy or scheming bitches, usually both. It’s to the credit of Jane Lynch and Jessalyn Gilsig that they can find the comedy in their characters, but it’s episodes like this one that illustrate just how pervasive it is on the show.Pin

– And speaking scheming queens, we have to give it up for Kurt, who got some of the best lines of the night.

It couldPin be argued that Kurt’s character is a cliche and a tragic one at that, but like we said, it’s a little refreshing that the gay character can be as politically incorrect as any of the other ones and they’ve built up enough goodwill by showing us various sides of the character in previous episodes, so we don’t mind it at all.

– In case it wasn’t obvious, this was clearly not our favorite episode of the season. All the plotlines feel like well-trod ground at this point. Don’t get us wrong, it’s always an hour bound to get you to laugh at least once and enjoy at least one musical number, but this one was a bit of a letdown.

[Screecaps: projectrungay.blogspot.com]

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